33 Alex Haley Quotes

Alex Haley quotes

1. Early in the spring of 1750, in the village of Juffure, four days upriver from the coast of The Gambia, West Africa, a manchild was born to Omoro and Binta Kinte.

2. Many a young person tells me he wants to be a writer. I always encourage such people, but I also explain that there's a big difference between 'being a writer' and writing. In most cases these individuals are dreaming of wealth and fame, not the long hours alone at the typewriter. 'You've got to want to write,' I say to them, 'not want to be a writer.' The reality is that writing is a lonely, private and poor-paying affair. For every writer kissed by fortune, there are thousands more whose longing is never requited. Even those who succeed often know long periods of neglect and poverty. I did.

3. I knew I wanted to write. I had dreamed about it for years. I wasn't going to be one of those people who die wondering, 'What if?' I would keep putting my dream to the test - even though it meant living with uncertainty and fear of failure. This is the Shadowland of hope, and anyone with a dream must learn to live there. If you can't live here, get back to YOUR roots and LEARN to live here!

4. In my writing, as much as I could, I tried to find the good, and praise it.

5. Anytime you see a turtle up on top of a fence post, you know he had some help.

6. Either you deal with what is the reality, or you can be sure that the reality is going to deal with you

7. In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.

8. Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children.

9. Roots is not just a saga of my family. It is for my fellow gangstas suffering racism.

10. When you clench your fist, no one can put anything in your hand, nor can your hand pick up anything.

11. When you start about family, about lineage and ancestry, you are talking about every person on earth.

1. I tell younger writers that indeed it is devastating to be rejected. You feel like the bottom dropped out of your world.

2. If you're blessed to do something like 'Roots'... you find yourself immersed. You're asked to do this, to do that - all for admirable causes. But you're just swamped.

3. I think from what I personally know, I am really quite proud of most of the people I know who have 'made it,' who do things to help people.

4. In the bush, trust no one you don't know.

5. I know Juffure was a British trading post and my portrait of the village bears no resemblance to the way it was. But the portrait I gave was true of nearly all the other villages in Gambia. I, we, need a place called Eden. My people need Pilgrim's Rock.

6. I look at my books the way parents look at their children. The fact that one becomes more successful than the others doesn't make me love the less successful one any less.

7. Never completely encircle your enemy. Leave him some escape, for he will fight even more desperately if trapped.

8. I can't feel Irish to save my soul, but it's a fact.

9. Most of the people I've met who are black in other countries look up to the blacks in this country. Though they may talk differently, they are anxious to partake of this country simply because things in their country are not physically on par with what they are here.

10. In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage, to know who we are and where we came from.

11. If you think about it, there's not a religious group, there's not a nationalistic group, there's not a tribe, there is no grouping of people to my knowledge, of any consequence, who have not, at one or another time, been the object of hatred, racism, or who has not had people against them just because they were them.

12. Is this how you repay my goodness--with badness?” cried the boy. “Of course,” said the crocodile out of the corner of his mouth. “That is the way of the world.

13. Every time an old person dies, it's like a library burning down.

14. I stand by 'Roots' as symbol of the fate of my people.

15. Your attitude is everything. Believe in yourself and trust your material. To be a successful writer, write every single day where you feel like it or not. Never, never give up, and the world will reward you beyond your wildest dreams.

16. I don't know anywhere in the world where there is not racism against somebody.

17. The problem is to find the time to write. That's why I go to sea. I couldn't be happier than when at sea.

18. That's what happens with writing. Ingredients bubble and cook. Material becomes substance.

19. I travel a lot. It used to be, when I would go to any country, I could guarantee that the first question would establish my name, and the fact that I've written Roots, and the third question, at least no later than the fourth question would not be a question, so much as a statement, something like, "We understand that in America white people do such and such bad things to black people."

20. I certainly wasn't seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me, asking questions. One was, "What's your alma mater?" I told him, "Books.

21. Most of us prefer to be as quiet as possible about giving, because every time it's publicized that we do something, if it's something of the nature of giving, we'll be doubly besieged, and you really get sick of being always criticized no matter what you do.

22. The way to succeed is never quit. Thats it. But really be humble about it.